“Our Baltic countries possess a rich heritage that can make a genuine contribution to the human and spiritual development of the ‘new’ Europe. Our nations, that have suffered the painful experience of a life deprived of freedom in an atheist society, bear witness to the importance of faith and religious values for the safeguard of human dignity and the full development of the person”. So say the bishops of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in a joint declaration published on 29 April, feast of St. Catherine of Siena, doctor of the Church and co-patron of Europe, at the end of the fifth meeting of the Baltic Episcopal Conferences in Tallinn (Estonia). On the eve of enlargement to a 25-member Europe, Cardinal Audrys Juozas Backis, metropolitan archbishop of Vilnius, Cardinal Janis Pujats, metropolitan archbishop of Riga, and the apostolic administrator of Estonia, archbishop Peter Zurbriggen, declare that they “fully share the joy and the pride of our citizens in this phase of transformation in the history of the Lands we love” and, while “recognising the deep sufferings of the past, look with confidence and courage to the opportunities and challenges of the future”. “As bishops of the Catholic Church the declaration continues we recall the fundamental role that the Christian faith has played in the history of our continent”, and “as Europeans we wish to reaffirm, in the words of John Paul II, that ‘a society that forgets the past risks being unable to tackle the present and, worse still, becoming the victim of its own future'”. “Our countries continue the bishops have regained their independence at a steep price; so they appreciate all the more the values of liberty and justice”. For the future of the continent, however, “we need to proclaim and defend the values of human dignity, the sacredness of life from conception to natural death, the central role of the family based on marriage, solidarity towards the poor, the principle of subsidiarity and the rule of law”.
